Last week, NPR did a report on the economic proposals of McCain and Obama. McCain’s centerpiece is tax cuts for the wealthy, while Obama champions a tax cut for the middle class. NPR ignored the fact that McCain is now promoting the same plan that he opposed 8 years ago, and that Bush’s tax cuts for the rich have had none of the promised results, making the economy worse, not better. Instead, NPR decided to focus on the “big ideas” behind the proposals.
What are these big ideas? In NPR’s words, the big idea behind the Obama plan was “fairness”, which could also be called “redistribution” (i.e. socialism). And the big idea behind the McCain plan was “growth”.
Leave it to the US media to get it totally wrong. Luckily for McCain, he can depend on the media to get it wrong again and again.
When gas passes $4/gallon, McCain proposes drilling in environmentally sensitive offshore areas. Never mind that there is so little oil there it will make very little difference in oil prices, and not for at least 10 years, if ever. But thank goodness for the media, who contrast Obama’s concern for the environment (out of touch and elitist) with McCain’s concern for jobs and growth.
If McCain can look good with a proposal that jeopardizes the environment for almost no economic benefit (but benefits oil companies), I suppose that it is only natural that he would get behind tax cut proposals that have have been a dismal failure over the last eight years.
Lastly, where can you read about this? Why in a non-US newspaper, of course.
One or two people have mentioned to me that I seem to be partisan in my selection of articles. It isn’t that I don’t have any articles making fun of Obama, they are just dwarfed in number by all the articles about McCain.
Finally, I have a defense. The International Herald Tribune asks “What’s so funny about Barack Obama” and realizes “Apparently, not very much”. Their conclusion? “Want Obama in a punch line? First, find a joke”.
It’s even harder on the joke writers for late night TV shows, who have plenty of “McCain is old” jokes, “Bill Clinton is a womanizer”, “Bush is an idiot”, or even “Gore is a stiff” jokes. But Obama? Mike Barry, who has written political jokes for everyone from Johnny Carson to Letterman, says “The thing is, he’s not buffoonish in any way. He’s not a comical figure.”
Even when someone makes a joke about Obama, it often doesn’t work. When Jon Stewart made a joke on The Daily Show about Obama changing his position on campaign financing, the tough audience reaction prompted him to say “You know, you’re allowed to laugh at him.”
So now The New Yorker magazine tries to joke about Obama on their cover. I posted that here, but the reactions to it are turning out to be funnier than the cover itself.
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We are there at the invitation of the Iraqi government. This is a sovereign nation. Twelve million people went to the polls to approve a constitution. It’s their government’s choice. If they were to say leave, we would leave. –George W. Bush, 24 May 2007
Of course not. The Bush administration has put the talks on hold (read: he’s going to dump this quagmire on the next president’s lap). Then the Republicans will be able to blame whatever happens on the Democrats.
Nancy Reagan always had something of an undeserved reputation as a dutiful but meek wife, probably because of the way she looked adoringly at Ronnie whenever they appeared in public together. But on Friday, Reagan showed that she can still be dutiful while also making it clear how she really feels. She appeared with McCain and endorsed him with the less-than-exuberant words:
Ronnie and I always waited until everything was decided, and then we endorsed. Well, obviously this is the nominee of the party.
That’s all she said during the entire event. Why the freezer treatment from the former first lady? It turns out that Nancy Reagan is good friends with McCain’s first wife Carol. You know, the one he cheated on and then dumped (along with his daughter) for the much younger, much richer Cindy. Nancy even hired Carol McCain as a press assistant after Carol was dumped. In his memoirs, John McCain says:
My divorce from Carol, whom the Reagans loved, caused a change in our relationship. Nancy … was particularly upset with me and treated me on the few occasions we encountered each other after I came to Congress with a cool correctness that made her displeasure clear. I had, of course, deserved the change in our relationship.
Personally, I find the cover funny, although I’m not sure if everyone will get the humor. The bottom line is that The New Yorker will probably sell a bunch of magazines because of this cover.
UPDATE 2: Newsweek magazine tells you why — even if you think the cover is funny — it will be a problem for Obama. Unfortunately, images — even sarcastic ones — speak louder than words.
UPDATE 4: The New Yorker editor defends the cover. “Satire doesn’t run with subtitles. A satirical cartoon would not be any good if it came with a set of instructions.”
Good satire has got to take the premise further comedically, and it has to make clear what the target of the satire is. The target of the satire is not how radical Obama is, but, rather, how ridiculous the right wing apprehensions are. Because that was unclear, the satire didn’t work.
But Matt Bors says “It seems that more people are worrying about people not getting it, than people actually not getting it.”
It’s a cartoon … and that’s why we’ve got the First Amendment. And I think the American people are probably spending a little more time worrying about what’s happening with the banking system and the housing market, and what’s happening in Iraq and Afghanistan, than a cartoon. So I haven’t spent a lot of time thinking about it. … I’ve seen and heard worse. I do think that in attempting to satirize something, they probably fueled some misconceptions about me instead. But that was their editorial judgment.
Wolf Blitzer asks South Carolina’s Republican Governor Mark Sanford if there are any “significant economic differences” between McCain and Bush. His response:
For instance, take, you know, take, for instance, the issue of — I’m drawing a blank, and I hate it when I do that, particularly on television. Take, for instance the contrast on NAFTA.
Wolf reminds him that Bush and McCain both support NAFTA. So Sanford blows it by trying to change the subject to Obama.
Watch it yourself — it’s hilarious:
Note that Sanford is considered a potential VP for McCain. But with friends like Sanford, who needs enemies?
I have to add that it would have been worse if today’s media had presided during Watergate. Would Woodward or Bernstein be able to publish their exposé of Watergate today?
Who is Phil Gramm? You might have heard his recent statement that America is a “nation of whiners” about the economy. He is a co-chair of McCain’s presidential campaign and arguably his main economic advisor — McCain once called Gramm his “financial guru”. So let’s look at Gramm’s economics:
Gramm was responsible for the “Commodity Futures Modernization Act” in 2000, which unleashed risky new investment instruments (which Warren Buffett called “financial weapons of mass destruction”) that led to the Bear Stearns bailout and the current epidemic of mortgage foreclosures.
Enron CEO Ken Lay was chair of Phil Gramm’s 1992 re-election campaign to the US Senate. Gramm’s wife was a director of Enron from 1993 to 2001.
Gramm co-authored Reagan’s first budget, which drastically cut Social Security benefits.
According to former official of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and current law professor Michael Greenberger “Gramm has been a central player in two major economic crises — the credit crisis and the incredibly high price of energy.”
So when Gramm tells you to stop whining, it is because you are getting in his way of becoming McCain’s Secretary of the Treasury and costing you even more money.
The International Red Cross “warned that the abuse constituted war crimes, placing the highest officials in the U.S. Government in jeopardy of being prosecuted.”
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On McCain’s website, they feature this quote from him about the Iranian missile tests:
It’s my understanding that this missile test was conducted by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. This is the same organization that I voted to condemn as a terrorist organization when an amendment was on the floor of the United States Senate. Senator Obama refused to vote, called it a provocative step. The fact is this is a terrorist organization and should have been branded as such.
One problem with this attack is that the vote in question — the Kyl-Lieberman amendment — was missed by McCain (who has missed more votes than any other Senator).
When confronted, the McCain campaign admitted the error, but didn’t remove the quote from his website and tried to deflect it by pointing out McCain’s “tough stance” against Iran. The problem with this argument is that the original statement also attacked Obama, claiming that he doesn’t think the Iranian Revolutionary Guard is a terrorist organization. But in March 2007, Obama sponsored legislation (S. 970) that would have designated them as a terrorist organization.
So in the end, McCain (who often attacks Obama for being “only words”) has no vote and no legislation. It is McCain who has only words, and his words are lies.
